A meadow in the car park

Yarrow or milfoil (Achillea millefolium) in the office car park, June 2016

For a few months now I have been working three days a week in an unprepossessing low-rise office on a small industrial estate in Newport, South East Wales, about 10 miles down the road from Cardiff.

I don’t go out much, as the weather has been wet and there isn’t a lot to see apart from corner shops, but the other day I found myself wandering around the car park in the sunshine, while on my mobile phone to someone. And I suddenly realised that the scruffy edges of the car park are full of wonderful wild flowers.

Grass and yellow wildflowers

The industrial estate is called Maesglas, which in Welsh means “green field”. The word “glas” is a difficult one, as it also means blue or grey, but I think I will interpret it here as green. So this was until recent decades pastureland, and I can still see the meadow flowers breaking through in a patch of rough grass several yards wide between the tarmac of the car park and a fence.

I took my camera to work a day or two after my discovery and pictured here are the plants I have tried to identify, still mainly using my old Keble Martin’s Concise British Flora from 1972.

My wild-flower bible – Keble Martin’s Concise British Flora from 1972

To my mind these plants prove it is a native Monmouthshire meadow from my childhood, not one of those “one size fits all” meadows planted all over the country by councils and highway agencies with no thought to local flora.

I’ll arrange them by their plant families, although I will still throw in Keble Martin’s old names for some of these families, far more descriptive to my mind than the new ones…

Rosaceae

Early morning rain on a cinquefoil – I think creeping cinquefoil (Potentilla reptans)

Here are the five-lobed leaves of the cinquefoil

Ranunculaceae

Easily confused with the cinquefoils are the buttercups…

Buttercup, I think the creeping buttercup (Ranunculus repens)

By its finer leaves, I think this one is a common meadow buttercup (Ranunculus acris)

Taking advice from Paul Seligman, I asked the UK Hoverflies Facebook group for an ID on this insect and they say it’s a female Sphaerophoria but can’t be more specific

Asteraceae (formerly Compositae)

There were common daisies and big daisies…

Daisy (Bellis perennis)

Big daisy, possibly ox-eye daisy (Chrysanthemum leucanthemum)

There were also many yellow members of the Asteraceae family…

Common dandelion (Taraxacum officinale)

Wall lettuce (Lactuca muralis)

Flowers of the wall lettuce – always hard to photograph!

I think this may be hawkweed ox-tongue (Pieris hieracioides)

This is the whole plant

By a fence grew this sowthistle (Sonchus), but I’m not sure exactly which species

The sowthistle flowers

The pretty silver tracery on the leaves is caused by the larvae of a leafmining insect, but I don’t know which exactly, perhaps a fly rather than a moth?

This was covered in insects and looked like a ragwort (Senecio jacobaea)

If it is a ragwort it has lost most of its petals

Some members of the Asteraceae family have purple flowers…

I think is a knapweed but I’m not sure which one (Centaurea)

A bit out of focus, but I think this may be a male red-tailed bumble bee (Bombus lapidarius)?

I had not realised until now that yarrow (milfoil, Achillea millefolium) is a member of the Asteraceae family. I see now it is “composite” in structure, but I had always thought its shape to be an “umbel” like carrot or parsley (the Umbelliferae family is now called Apiaceae).

Yarrow Achillea millefolium

Composite flower of yarrow

Another yarrow…

…with a fly on it, which I would call a “greenbottle” – it’s possibly Lucilia caesar?

Lamiaceae (formerly Labiatae)

There is lots of selfheal (Prunella vulgaris) in the meadow area…

…and it also prettifies the gravel paths

Primulaceae

A miniature beauty is the scarlet pimpernel (Anagallis arvensis), which is abundant but very tiny…

Scarlet pimpernel in the meadow area

There are not many wildflowers this colour. It’s also known as red chickweed or poorman’s or shepherd’s weather glass – because the flowers open only when the sun shines.

More pimpernel in the gravel of the paths

Fabaceae (formerly Papilionaceae)

Wet, white clover (Trifolium repens)

A tiny trefoil, like small yellow clover. I think it may be Trifolium micranthum, also known as slender trefoil – the fact that the leaflets are sessile (no stems) is a diagnostic factor

More of the tiny yellow trefoil

In the outdoor “smoking” area is this bigger yellow trefoil, which I think is the common bird’s foot trefoil, Lotus corniculatus

As a child we called this “bacon and eggs” as the flower buds tend to be red alongside the yellow flowers.

It is also all over the meadow area and the flowers are lovely – the leaves pictured here belong to a bindweed, as the trefoil obviously has leaves like clover

My first thought on seeing the previous plant and the next was that they were “vetch”, but I realise now that although the flowers are similar – they are in the same “bean” family – the leaves are very different…

This is definitely a sweet-pea relative, probably meadow vetchling (Lathyrus pratensis) – you can just see a tendril

This insect was on the vetch but I can’t work out if it is a green aphid or a tiny shield bug, as I didn’t notice it until I enlarged the image

Geraniaceae

Common herb robert (Geranium robertianum) alongside a wall

This next one is an absolute delight to me. It was tiny and when I photographed it I thought it was a willowherb, but when I looked at the picture I realised it had five petals, not four. After a lot of searching, through the rose, mallow and primula families, I think I have found it is a member of the Geranium family, dove’s-foot cranesbill (Geranium molle)

You can’t really see the divided geranium-like leaves, but this is tiny Geranium molle, the dove’s-foot cranesbill

Onagraceae

There were lots of willowherbs in the car park.

Great willowherb (Epilobium hirsutum)

One of the small willowherbs, but I can never identify the exact species

Polygonaceae

I can usually tell if a plant is a member of the dock family (Genus Rumex)…

Dock beside a wall

It’s probably broad-leaved dock, Rumex obtusifolius – and is pretty and green at the moment

This next one was a big surprise. I have seen it all my life but never realised this usually brown and shabby plant was called “sorrel”…

Common sorrel (Rumex acetosa)

Close up, the seeds are pink and jewel-like

Convolvulaceae

In a corner of the car park is someone else’s rubbish dump…

At home among the metal machines and wooden pallets is bindweed (Calystegia sepium), which I also call Convolvulus

As I took my pictures I had to explain what I was doing to several workmen, and of course they call my lovely wildflowers “weeds”. They were right about one, though – in the corner was Japanese knotweed (Fallopia or Reynoutria japonica), an invasive plant thought to be such a bane that there are laws against planting it in the wild and against incorrectly disposing of it.

Japanese knotweed

All in all, though, I love this little car park meadow – and even if mankind tries to destroy it or to cover it over with concrete, again and again green pastures will break through in the unlikeliest of places…